“Stay,” he says and then springs away. I thought he was moving so fast during our recons just to show off. But it turns out he was moving like a toddler compared to his true top speed. Faster than a Cimmerian hare he races toward the ship’s front section and disappears inside. The warships do not advance.
Instead, they shed black motes. I magnify with my visor and see the motes are shaped like men. Tall ones.
I balance my rifle on the lip of the crater. “Fel, meat contacts are dropping from the ships. I count ten. They’re big, Fel. Fel?”
He emerges from the Snowball carrying our pilot, Xaria, over his shoulder. The Blue woman is unconscious in her emergency suit. He glances over his shoulder and races back toward me. His voice crackles in my ear. “Pi…corv…iggy…prep…”
The enemy have already landed. I link my rifle’s scope to my helmet and scan the terrain. I barely sight one. A man-shaped shadow skims over the surface of the asteroid and I experience a dread like none I’ve ever felt. I wondered what enemy could make Fel nervous. Now I know. The shadow does not come in a straight line. It jitters, like lightning. I fire six shots and hit nothing, and I’m not a bad shot. Even Fel said so.
Something blurs past me to the right and I tumble back, suit screaming puncture alerts. Arresting myself, I see a long gash along the right side of my suit’s torso. I’m shot, but not wounded. I didn’t even see anyone fire. I deploy a seal before my oxygen vents. As the seal closes, I grab my rifle and rush back to my position just as Fel vaults over the lip, hurls down Xaria, and fires six shots back the way he came with his multiRifle.
“Dustwalkers,” he says. “Get Xaria to the pirate corvette. It’s our only—” Then his left arm comes off as something gleaming passes through just over the biceps. Fel spins, gathering himself just as a shadow blurs past overhead. A tongue of metal sweeps down and cuts Fel’s rifle in half. I fire at the shadow, and must hit it, because its trajectory alters, and it retreats to the west.
I grab Xaria’s foot and boost toward the pirate refuge as Fel covers our retreat. He lands behind us with a clang. His voice is tight, scared. “It’s the same frigate pack we spotted five days ago. We’ll never outrun them.” The door above closes and seals us off from the surface. “You can let that go,” he says.
I look back to Xaria. Her foot is still in my hands, but her body is gone. Her leg was severed at the hip by something with the precision of a medical laser. I let go in horror and the leg drifts away. “Get the corvette’s reactor on. I’ll cover you,” Fel says, his pistol pointed up at the sealed entry. I don’t move.
A shadow crouches atop the corvette. Taking a breath, I drop to a knee, raise my rifle, and pull the trigger. Only…I don’t. Pressure builds in my hand. I look down. My hand still clutches the rifle, but it’s begun to drift away. I move my arm and the hand separates from the wrist. White bone surrounded by bright meat stares back at me. The pain is delayed and indescribable. I’m too horrified to scream. I just pant as my suit seals over the wound.
Gunfire rattles behind me. A hand grips my throat so hard I choke. I’m lifted in the air by a huge Dustwalker in camouflage armor. The Dustwalker is not watching me. They watch Fel. His pistol is broken. His long-knife is out as he faces down another Dustwalker. This one is three heads taller than Fel. The Dustwalker pops their helmet’s blackout visor, revealing a woman’s face. Her bright golden eyes are wide-set and twice as large as mine. Her skin is pale brown, her nose broken innumerable times. She looks at Fel like he’s a joke.
“A long-ranger. I have heard of your cult’s martial worth. Your kind have killed several of our best knights.” She plants her long razor into the floor and pulls a shorter blade to match Fel’s long-knife. “I feared I would not get to test myself before the war was done. Gratitude for this—”
Fel lunges at her faster than I thought possible. The Dustwalker swims to the side. Their blades spark. By the time they part, she’s severed his remaining metal arm at the shoulder. She hacks off his two metal legs, clucking her tongue. He floats, thrashing like a miserable limbless crab. “Be still, Red. You’ll go to your Vale soon enough.” Her eyes scan the hangar. “Bring them. Truth flayers have questions.”
I’m nearly blind with pain as they freight Fel and me out of the pirate refuge to a group of eight more Dustwalkers who wait on the surface. Their ships coast toward us. Casually they fire down on the Snowball’s remains. What was left of the ship that the Alltribe gave to Ephraim for his services simply disappears. The Dustwalkers seem to be speaking to each other. One points off to a bluff in the distance. One of their ships floats lower. A bizarre appendage emerges from his belly. A scanner?
Then a tremble goes through the asteroid. A tremble that makes the Golds look down. The tremble turns into a shudder, and then a shaking. They turn in unison as something rises from the asteroid’s surface several hundred paces off. An obelisk of chrome metal maybe fifty meters high. Another rises to its left, and another, and another. The Moonies stare, as dumbstruck as I am, and see light building in the tips of the obelisks.
The light lunges overhead until the obelisks are linked together by a spiderweb of white light that grows bright and brighter before lashing out toward the ships. My vision goes white. Soon the pain of my severed hand is forgotten as my head explodes in a song of agony. I curl like a spider, screaming. I lose all sense of time, of myself, of my memories. There is only pain. And then it is gone. I don’t feel my body. How long was it?
Seconds?
Minutes?
Hours?
My vision is blurry. I am floating over the asteroid in a slow spin. Strange chrome orbs move across its surface. Slow, methodical. I spin toward space. The stars burn coldly in the distance. I spin again toward the asteroid to see one of the orbs withdrawing a long glistening lance from the head of a Moonie Gold. It comes my way. No rush. No need. I spin back to the stars and remember the Snowball always sent its messages to Mars through a system of drone relays. I don’t know if it’s close enough. I use my helmet’s voice commands and call up my broadcaster.
“Agea Command, this is Lyria of Lagalos. I’ve hit pay dirt.”
I spin back toward the asteroid to see the orb floating in front of me. It is the size of a horse. A delicate lance protrudes from its center. I stop spinning. The lance creeps toward my visor.
An inhuman voice comes through my com system and fills my helmet. “Sister…why do you hide in the warmblood?” I must be dying. The machine is talking. “Sister…you are injured…” the orb says again, but it is not talking to me.
13
LYRIA
The Rose’s Game
THE FIRST THING I remember from my dream is the crashing of waves. The first thing I feel when I wake is the ache of my wrist. The first thing I see is the chrome orb floating out of the room through a hole in the ceiling. I scramble up, confused.
I am naked. Medical patches cover two wounds on my stomach and a deep cut on my right thigh. My hand is back on like it was never cut off. A pink line encircles my wrist.
The room is circular, clean, and rather grand. The walls are warm wood except for ovals of glass that peer into aqua-blue water filled with coral reefs. Around them, and deeper on, strange creatures swim. Two vaguely human shapes with translucent skin peer back at me from behind a mass of green and pink coral. Their dreamy eyes, big as my fists, are lime green. A lonesome song warbles from their wide mouths.